With the release of VMware vRealize Operations Manager version 6.1, VMware introduced a new method for monitoring inside a supported operating system. Before vRealize Operations 6.1, you needed vRealize Hyperic to monitors operating systems, middleware and applications running in physical, virtual and cloud environments. With the 6.1 release of vRealize Operations, VMware introduced the End-Point Operations Agent (EPOps or EPO agent). Not to be confused with the McAfee EPo agent.

End-Point Operations Agent to monitor vCenter Server Appliance

Of course you can monitor the basic items of vCenter Server but with vCenter Self-Monitoring Solution for vRealize Operations Manager you can monitor all of the vCenter internals to provide you with more visibility into your vCenter health and capacity usage. It also comes with pre-defined dashboards which allow you to see the status and the relationships between the different components of the vCenter, such as: SSO, database, web client, inventory server and application server.

The solution is applicable both for Windows based and Linux based vCenter servers and requires installation of End-Point Operations Agents on all vCenter and SSO Servers (Windows and Appliance) to collect the necessary data. The vCenter Self-Monitoring Solution for vRealize Operations Manager requires a standard edition of vRealize Operations for both the appliance and standalone deployments. It is compatible with both vRealize Operations 6.1 and 6.2 and supports monitoring vCenter Server 5.1, 5.5 and 6.0.

A structured tree for easy navigation between the different vCenter server components.

Overall view of different vCenter servers and have one consolidate view to reflect their overall health, structure and key performance indicators.

Simplified end to end troubleshooting by easy drill down to the different components.

Health Monitoring and Availability:

proactively monitor and assess components availability, such as vCenter server service, SQL server, Reverse proxy, API endpoint service and many more

Get proactively notified on failures, performance and utilization issues on an ongoing basis, review symptoms and recommendations for a remediation strategy

Performance:

Ensure vCenter services and components are meeting the requirements for stable operation. For example, this can be accomplished by monitoring metrics like vCenter management web service response time, vSphere web client response time ,vSphere managed object browser response time, vSphere SSO Load balancer response time and many more metrics

Capacity

Monitor disk usage on disks across all vCenter components.

How to install vCenter Self-Monitoring Solution for vRealize Operations

Besides vRealize Operations you need the 64 bit Linux End-Point Operations Agent which you can download on the same page as the vRealize Operations appliance or installer.

Because I use vRealize Operations 6.2a the build number is ‘3404388′ and the file is ‘vRealize-Endpoint-Operations-Management-Agent-x86-64-linux-6.2.0-3404388.rpm’. The file name and build may vary according to the vRealize Operation version you are using.

Install End-Point Operations Agent on vCenter Server Appliance

To install the agent on the vCenter Server you will need root access on the console or ssh and the shell enabled. You can enable both on the vCenter Server Appliance administration page (https://[vCenter Server]:5480). Copy the agent file you downloaded to a temporary location and run the installer.

Carefully watch the output of the installer and confirm that the installation was successful.

Configure the End-Point Operations Agent

In my environment the start of the agent service failed but after some investigation I found the solution. By default the agent uses the ‘epops‘ user to run but this turned out to be insufficient. You need to change the credentials with which the agent connects to the vCenter Server services. You can do this by following the instructions below.

Erik Scholten

The founder and driving force behind VMGuru. With over 20 years experience in IT, he now works as a Cloud Management Specialist at VMware Benelux. He worked as technical consultant, pre-sales and solutions architect for several systems integrators.
He's a long time VMware VCP Data Center Virtualization, VCP Desktop, VCP Cloud Management & Automation, VCA, VSP and VTSP, vExpert Cloud (2017) and one of the few 10 times vExpert (2009 - 2018).